Got an e-commerce website? Got a handle on your visitors?There are many millions of consumers shopping on the web, abandoning the crowded isles and store trips for the convenience of the web. They are finding a range of products and services they would otherwise go searching for in the physical world.

They are also missing something….the ability to interact with other customers and sales staff to help them find the products they are looking for. The online world loses the crowd that can interact in a fluid, natural manner where like-minded consumers trade information.

Most consumers do not leave feedback or reviews. And many do not make purchases, moving on to other sites. They are invisible to the site owner, taking away with them valuable information, opinions and suggestions which, if captured, could yield a more compelling shopping experience and higher sales.

Behavior analytics, demographic segmentation and rule based targeting can only go so far. New software, focusing on input based on social science, or the collective influence of a consumer group, can tap into the invisible customer across multiple dimensions, allowing for collective product targeting. The concept can lift conversion rates by at least 20%.

The use of surveys and user rankings can serve to introduce the necessary collective bias into segmentation strategies to hyper-target product recommendations.